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Episode 76 - KCGameCON

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 14m·analyzed·Dec 3, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

KC GameCon pinball commentary, Primus announcement, and tournament coverage breakdown.

Summary

Tony and Dennis from Eclectic Gamers Podcast discuss their experience commentating the 2018 KC GameCon Pinball Championship, a 48-player match-play tournament they streamed live with a custom five-camera setup. They cover pinball news including Stern's Primus announcement (100-unit run using the Woe Nelly playfield) and upcoming Munsters leaks, while providing detailed tournament coverage highlighting underrepresented classic games like Frontier, Grand Prix, and the EM collection.

Key Claims

  • Stern has emphasized three cornerstone titles per year but only released two in 2018 (Iron Maiden and Deadpool), suggesting a third cornerstone may be coming before year-end or early 2019

    medium confidence · Tony's analysis of Stern's production schedule and Beatles/Primus being non-cornerstone titles

  • Mafia pinball machine production reduced from 100 units to 20 units, indicating poor sales and that limited-edition scarcity alone cannot justify $7,500-$10,000 pricing for simplistic games

    high confidence · Tony citing Pinside distributor Pinball Star's reduction in Mafia availability and MSRP

  • Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) did the art package for Primus Pinball

    high confidence · Direct statement in news segment

  • Munsters pinball machine is close to official confirmation, with cast members expected at Texas Pinball Festival

    medium confidence · Leaked rules, photos, and confirmed actor attendance, though not yet officially announced

  • KC GameCon pinball tournament was organized on only 2-3 months' notice by Carrie Wing

    high confidence · Tony's statement about timeline and Carrie's organizational role

Notable Quotes

  • “in my opinion this is basically a vanity project for Primus and it's only going to be attractive to people who are after Primus memorabilia and have the money to get it”

    Tony @ ~12:00 — Assessment of Primus Pinball's market appeal and positioning as niche collector item

  • “you cannot just rely solely on a limited run quantity to ask for an exorbitant price for a simplistic game”

    Tony @ ~18:00 — Commentary on Mafia pinball as test case disproving FOMO-only pricing model

  • “her expectations for our commentary were very, very low... I would have been happy if there had been a single camera on a single game that was just capturing footage from that game for the entire day”

    Dennis @ ~28:00 — Carrie Wing's original expectations versus delivered production quality

  • “pinball streaming's really hard compared to video game streaming”

    Dennis @ ~65:00 — Technical commentary on multi-camera pinball coverage challenges

  • “I've seen pinball tournaments that do that. I've seen pinball tournaments that don't do it and in my opinion, you want the commentary all the time”

    Dennis @ ~72:00 — Dennis advocating for continuous commentary as standard for tournament coverage

Entities

TonypersonDennispersonJeremy PackerpersonCarrie WingpersonSteve HillpersonPaige IlsleypersonSunshine BondpersonAdam McKinneypersonGordon BrownpersonStern PinballcompanyKC Game Conevent

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Pinball community interest in streaming classic EM and solid-state games higher than commonly featured DMD titles; positive reception to underrepresented game coverage

    medium · Dennis and Tony's deliberate strategy to focus streaming on less-common games; positive community response to Frontier, Grand Prix, and EM coverage; audience behavior during finals indicating interest in technical/rule depth

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Tournament setup philosophy emphasizes 'evil-fied' (harder) configuration for solid-state and DMD games while leaving EMs relatively untouched; impacts competitive strategy and accessibility

    medium · Steve Hill's game setup choices described as creating brutally difficult play conditions on modified games; re-earn lock requirements on Attack from Mars, extended shots on Hoops

  • ?

    event_signal: KC GameCon successfully integrated pinball tournament with esports convention; organizers requested return next year despite initial low expectations for production quality

    high · Carrie Wing's request for pinball to return in 2019 and statement that staff are 'very pleased' with pinball side of event

  • ?

    leak_detection: Munsters Pinball approaching official confirmation with leaked rules, photos, and confirmed cast attendance at Texas Pinball Festival

    high · Multiple leak sources (rules, photos, actor availability) pointing toward imminent official announcement

  • $

    market_signal: Magic Girl secondary market trading at $20,000-$30,000 despite non-functional condition contradicts Mafia's failure to sustain premium pricing; suggests brand/licensing IP value independent of game state

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.223

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, December 2nd. This is episode 76, and I am Tony. And I am Dennis. And we're going to get to 76 as a number here later in the episode. I know, it crossed my mind as I was saying it. I was like, oh, hey, that works. And we're remote. We normally record in the same place, but we're back to the old ways, the dark ways. Yeah, because, well, pretty much my entire family has the plague, and I'm tired because yesterday was busy. It was really busy. So what's been going on since episode 75?
0:56
I'm no longer on call. I'm actually able to go do things again it's amazing most of what's been going on that's actually worth talking about is set up so we'll talk about it later on in the show yeah okay well that's fine I'm going to go with that because the other stuff I don't think anybody's really going to care about yeah well I don't have much new personal news that's of any interest to any of the listeners So I was going to note that we were both on the Slam Tilt podcast last week. Yes, we were. That was episode 118. That is a podcast that is focused on pinball. I have a link to it in the show notes, so if people want to go and check that out, you can. We already have, obviously, because we were there.
1:45
And we played a very massive amount of Game You Like, Game You Hate, which was a pinball segment that they used to do on their show in the earlier episodes. And we definitely made up for it. Yes. I think it was almost two hours worth of content there. I mean, the whole episode, not just the game. But the game was the bulk of the content. But I thought it was fun. It was. And I'm glad that they were good sports about it. And then the other big thing, of course, has been I just got back less than an hour ago from KC Game Con. And we're going to touch on pinball and KC Game Con in the pinball segment. So we'll do more on that in a little bit. But let's go ahead and pivot to pinball, and let's start with some news items. I really only have two. One we happen to talk about on the Slam Tilt Podcast, but we'll briefly touch on it here. And that is Stern Pinball announced Primus Pinball.
KC GameCon Pinball Championship
event
KC Game Onorganization
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Primus Pinballgame
Woe Nellygame
Pabst Can Crushergame
Munsters Pinballgame
Mafia Pinballgame
Pinball Starcompany
Slam Tilt Podcastorganization
Electric Bat Arcadeorganization
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
Attack from Marsgame
Frontiergame

medium · Tony's comparative analysis between Magic Girl's speculation bubble and Mafia's failed sales

  • ?

    community_signal: Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) continues art direction role at Stern for Primus Pinball

    high · Confirmed artist credit for Primus art package; ongoing design role indicator

  • $

    market_signal: Mafia Pinball production reduced from 100 to 20 units; demonstrates limited-edition scarcity alone cannot sustain $7,500-$10,000 pricing for EM-style simplistic games

    high · Distributor reduction in production cap; Tony's analysis of failed FOMO-only pricing model; comparison to Magic Girl secondary market performance

  • ?

    announcement: Stern Pinball announced Primus (100-unit, 2-inch flipper, EM-style using Woe Nelly playfield, $8,000 MSRP)

    high · Official Stern announcement covered in podcast with specific production, pricing, and design details

  • ?

    product_concern: Pabst Can Crusher art package considered superior to Primus despite using same playfield; suggests art direction quality variance on Woe Nelly platform

    medium · Tony and Dennis's assessment that Can Crusher art is 'more interesting' and lacks Primus's 'offensive issues'; acknowledgment of stylistic preference between Franchi/Packer/Dirty Donnie

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern may announce third 2018 cornerstone title before year-end given only two released (Iron Maiden, Deadpool) against stated three-per-year strategy; Beatles and Primus classified as non-cornerstone

    medium · Tony's analysis of Stern's cornerstone production timeline and Beatles/Primus/Supreme/Star Trek classification as boutique/vault/special editions

    • 2:40
    That is a 100-game run. Yes, themed around the band Primus. Very trippy artwork. Jeremy Packer, a.k.a. Zombie Yeti, did the art package. the game is using that Woe Nelly Big Juicy Melons playfield that was used for Pabst Can Crusher a while ago so it's got the 2 inch flippers it's sort of reminiscent of an EM era style game I believe the price point is $8,000 in my opinion this is basically a vanity project for Primus and it's only going to be attractive to people who are after Primus memorabilia and have the money to get it. You can get a Woe Nelly for well under $8,000. I can understand that you'd probably prefer this art package than one that's quite that offensive. Right, but let's be honest. Of the games made with this play field, this is still not the best. Can Crusher still is the best art package. I mean, I would probably prefer Can Crusher, yeah, but that really comes down to a style choice. It seems like in the world of pinball aficionados, Christopher Franchi and Jeremy Packer tend to kind of vie for who is the favorite, and Dirty Donnie, who did the Pabst Cancrusher art package, tends to be the greatly respected but third-place finisher in that ranking. But, again, that just comes down to what people like in terms of style.
    4:05
    But Cancrusher is more interesting than Primus and, as you said, does not have the offensive issues that you have off of Wonelly, and it's got a bitchin' van.
    4:20
    Let's see. Other news item. I didn't put this one in the notes, but more leaks are happening regarding the Munster's pinball machine. I did actually see some of those the other day. Yeah, so there have been some more photos that have leaked. The rules have leaked. I believe there is now a confirmation that the actor who played Eddie Munster, as well as I believe an actress who was involved with that show, are going to be at Texas Pinball Festival. So it's essentially all but officially confirmed. I was just now looking to see if maybe there has been official confirmation, so we'd actually not miss this late-breaking news, but it is the weekend. Right. It'll come tomorrow, because since we're recording today, it'll come tomorrow. That's when it happens. I mean, I have been thinking, and I continue to think at this point, that Munsters is going to be announced before 2019, officially announced. I wouldn't be surprised. Well, and the reason I'm saying that is, right now the Stern Facebook page has been all about the Beatles, like Paul McCartney playing the game and all that. So they're still really advertising all that. But the thing is, Stern's emphasized that they have three cornerstone titles a year. Well, we've only had two cornerstone titles this year. We had Iron Maiden at the start of the year, and then back in August or so was Deadpool. So we haven't had the third one. Beatles isn't a cornerstone. It's a kapow title. Primus is a boutique project. Supreme was a boutique project. Star Trek was a vault edition. So those aren't cornerstones. That's what I'm basing it on.
    6:01
    I don't think there's anything wrong with that assumption. I agree with you. And I think they will probably announce, if they don't announce before the end of the year, it'll be announced right in the opening weeks of next year. I mean, I could see them delay. I just, I think that, I don't think they're married as hardcore to the three cornerstones as maybe the hobbyists think. I think it really comes down to production, though. if the sales on Deadpool and the back catalog, including Iron Maiden, are still going strong and they don't really need to put a new game on the line, then they'll wait. They're not going to rush it just so they can say, oh, well, we got three cornerstones out in the year. In fact, we might not even think about it in terms of calendar years. They have still a couple months, I think, until they actually reach the 12-month anniversary of Iron Maiden. So it doesn't have to be December. I'm just – that's my guess.
    6:55
    and let's go ahead and just hit on the last minor news item. I saw a few days ago on Pinside, actually, that Pinball Star, which is a distributor, they distribute a number of manufacturers like Jersey Jack, and also they've been selling the Mafia pin, or trying to sell the Mafia pinball machine, because they did note that the game is limited to 20, And last, when we talked about this, the game was limited to 100.
    7:26
    So, this tells me one thing. It probably tells you the same thing. That it's another failure and they didn't sell any of the 100? Well, maybe they sold a few. But here's part of the thing. It's at a $7,500 price point, if I remember. But that's actually Unit 11 and beyond. The first 10, which have a special plaque and everything. I think those were asking and still are asking for closer to $10,000. Why? Because they're special.
    7:59
    I'm not going to argue about them being special. Okay. Well, there's nothing to argue about then. And I wasn't trying to get an argument. I was just saying that I thought Mafia was very, very important. And it's proving what I thought it, as a test case, needed to prove, that you cannot just rely solely on a limited run quantity to ask for an exorbitant price for a simplistic game. This was an important test. We didn't know if it was true or not. An unworking game like Magic Girl was trading between $20,000 and $30,000 at one point. So I think it was reasonable that people might think, oh, this hobby's crazy. They'll just do whatever if it's going to be limited. They'll spend whatever, and apparently the number of people willing to do that for an EM-style game in particular, at least, is very limited. Very limited. I'd say limited to less than 20. That would be my guess, and it makes sense to me because there was nothing about that game that was worth that kind of money.
    9:05
    Okay. Well, that's all I have for pinball news. So let's go to the second and primary pinball topic, and I touched on it in my introduction. KC Game Con. It is going on right now still for a couple more hours, in fact, in terms of – Right. By the time anybody actually hears this, it'll have been over for a while. Yeah, yeah. I'm not saying rush out there and go visit. It's a little late for that. But I was there today. I got in about 30 minutes after the pinball site opened. and it was very quiet. That was 10.30 in the morning, so it was relatively quiet, but a number of people started to go in. You could see a lot of people who, I think, using my powers of stereotyping, I could safely say were probably there for the video game side of things, were coming over and they were playing games while they had downtime. And we saw that yesterday when the tournament was going, and I also saw that on Friday, which was the first official day. But I've actually been out there Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And I am excited. This is like working a work conference. Holy crap. Yeah, I can understand. That's just, that's a lot of, especially to be working it the whole time. Yeah, it was just like, at least, I mean, they weren't full days for me. Yesterday obviously was. Today was about half a day. Friday was, they started at about five. I started a little after four. So that was about half a day, I suppose. And then Thursday was really just set up and it was relatively quiet. But let's talk a little bit about the 2018 KC GameCon Pinball Championship. So let me give some background, I guess, for listeners who are not really familiar. We've touched on this a little bit in prior episodes, but KC GameCon is an e-sporting event. There's a group called KC Game On that in the Kansas City area sort of organizes tournaments and stuff for video games. So things like Fortnite, Call of Duty, that sort of stuff. But once a year, they have a convention. So they go and they get a space. It's usually near the airport in Kansas City, Missouri. And they just have like these live LAN parties and they have some live tournaments. There's commentators, there's vendors, there's cosplay. So it's kind of like a convention, a video game convention. and this year pinball was invited to attend we didn't have a whole lot of notice it was only about uh two or three months i think and carrie wing who is a area tournament player and collector she took the lead on this she organized this tournament and did all of the work to get all the various people pulled together and that's where we came in because at one of the tournaments One of them that you had to miss, but when I was at, she came up and said that they would really like it if you and I would be a commentary team and live stream the pinball championship on Saturday, December 1st.
    12:10
    And of course, we said, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We were like, yeah, sure, whatever. We can do commentary. We can do that. We're good. I've watched commentary. It doesn't look to be that hard. Yeah, well, and that's, yeah.
    12:29
    I mean, it depends on how one defines hard, I suppose. The first thing was sort of that the scope of it, as originally explained, expanded to how it actually ended up. And that's more on the technical side. so originally it just seemed like they wanted us to do commentary and wanted to know if we were able to bring a computer that could drive all of the commentary equipment which i happen to have so that was no problem and then that kind of as we did tests and we're getting things ready and uh we were starting to stream more on twitch through our podcast channel uh it started to be more like okay well now we're supplying the cameras now we're supplying the cords now we're Basically, at the end of the day, yesterday, all of the equipment was ours. We used our cameras. We used our rigs. And that's all fine. It's just that meant we had to go and figure out all the setup stuff. And that was part of the challenge that we had with this. I was talking with Carrie today, and she said that her expectations for our commentary were very, very low. And then she clarified because I was like, oh, very low, huh? Like down on the floor low. You didn't really expect much out of us. And she's like, no, no, no. What I meant was I would have been happy if there had been a single camera on a single game that was just capturing footage from that game for the entire day. That, for her, would have been awesome. That's what they were hoping for. We went beyond that. Oh, no. Yeah. We've seen – well, Tony and I watch esports commentary stuff all the time. Oh, yeah. Constantly. I mean, here in my home, especially with me and my oldest daughter, we watch esports constantly. Yep. And I've seen a number of pinball tournaments streamed. I've, of course, seen people like DeadflipJackDanger doing their streaming. And so there have been things that I've picked up that I really like that other streamers have done in pinball and also things I hate that I didn't want to have be a problem for us. so the way we did it was we put together and I should go ahead and say we have a link in the show notes to the full stream and it's 10 hours long so you're welcome have a good day so the way we went ahead about it is we took two boom mic rigs which had two cameras on them one for the scores and one for the play fields and we would so we'd have two games set up every round and there were this was a match play tournament it was a cap of 48 players there was one no show and there was a wait list so i believe they had no problem filling that out they played three qualifying rounds on banks of three games so it's four player match play banks of three one em one solid state one dot matrix display game and so every round of those three qualifying rounds when there was finally a lull when there was a break and there was a break between each round. Tony would go over and start repositioning those rigs. And then we'd get those hooked in, and then I'd be over at the commentary desk, and Tony would be positioning those games so that we could get as much of the play field captured and get the scores in. And Tony, you got... By the end of it, you were like eyeballing it. You didn't even need me anymore. Well, no. They still needed some adjustment. By the end of it, we definitely got to the point where it was, you could kind of just by looking at it know how close it was. Because we moved them enough times during the course of the day. And it was humorous when you're sitting there and it's between things and you're running around and you're moving them around and you're moving cables and you're crawling under all the pinball machines trying to get everything set up. And, yeah, it was interesting and it was a good time, though, definitely. And I'm glad I wasn't doing it again today. Oh, yeah. No. Well, to a 10 hour. I mean, while we weren't talking the entire 10 hours when those break screens are up, other than the break for lunch, it was generally we had to do stuff. It was you'd see on the street. You can see on the stream when we're actually going to relabeling because we had to activate the scenes to relabel the camera, the games and flip the cameras because we were swiveling them so much. You just had to keep inverting the images and trying to get them all positioned and looking at what it would look like live. But in between all of that, it was trying to figure out what the next banks are, trying to figure out if the banks are going to have the same number of people on them or if there are going to be any multi-group banks. Because if there are, that's better for us because we have a better likelihood of showing a good amount of content because we're trying to minimize downtime where you just had to hear us talk. You're trying to make sure there was as much gameplay as we could get. Because during qualifying, it was seven people deep. That was one of our challenges because we were pushing our USB hubs and connections. And quite frankly, we were out of cameras that we owned at that point that were functional with the setup that we could not accommodate player cams. So we were running a five-camera setup. We had the built-in camera for the laptop, which was what we used as our commentary cam. And then we had the two rigs with two cameras for score and play field. So that's five. And to make sure that they always kept going, we left those all running simultaneously into the system. So I know this is getting a little technical for people. So one of the problems that we quickly found out during qualifying is we couldn't even see who was playing. We didn't know who was playing the game. Not at all. Between everybody lined up and waiting for their turns up at the machines and everything, when we were working the full press, we couldn't even see the machines. All we saw was a wall of backs. Yeah it was packed And that good It was packed But a lot of times we just had to refer to people by players Sometimes we have other people the attendees the players would tell us who the people were who were playing So we start to get a sense of it Tony started to look up the names in the Match Play software so we could try And then we know who the group was but we didn always it was so thick though Sometimes we couldn't tell who was – which one was actually playing.
    18:43
    So, you know, just first-world streaming problems. By the time of finals, we knew. We knew who everyone was.
    18:50
    So we did it like that. So we'd show two games per round. and then once we got to novice finals and A division finals, we showed every game that those groups played.
    19:03
    And we checked with those groups and they were fine with it. And because it was a bank, that was nice. We could always put one rig between game one and game two, have the second rig on game three, and then that would just be a very simple, what I call the Tony pivot. Tony wouldn't have to unplug any cables. It was just spin those cameras around. I'd flip the images and then he just had to line up the score cams and the playfield cam a little bit, and that would be it. And we usually got that done within 90 seconds. Yeah, easily. I was really pleased with how efficient it ended up being. I guess we should go ahead and say, now, the novice winner, it was Paige.
    19:39
    Yes, Paige that I cannot for the life of me tell how to pronounce her last name. It's Ilsley, I think, Ilsley, L-L-S-L-E-Y. Yeah, we should have asked her. Yes, we should have. novice but so i thought that was really neat i'm really glad we streamed the novice finals because i think that it's good to see what people who aren't always doing this at a high level all the time or maybe newer to the game or just don't play in tournaments so much actually seeing how they play particular games was pretty interesting especially given how hard some of these games were set up oh they were there were some brutal brutal what what steve hill did to your hoops was evil. I mean, Hoops was playing like a really nasty old EM. That's what it was playing like. It was so brutal. Yeah, Steve Hill, who is currently the, I believe currently the number one player ranked in Kansas, he is very knowledgeable on rules, and he was very involved with a lot of the game setup, and he tested most of the games. And I believe the general rule of thumb was all games were were were evil-fied except the ems were basically untouched so we had this you know this massive assortment of games and it was just like yeah you if you thought you knew how a particular game played like for example the the um attack from mars they set it up to it still ended up playing fairly long but it's afm it's always going to Right, but people who are used to saying, oh, yeah, Attack from Mars, I'll just go into my multiball. Well, it took six shots because you had to re-earn the lock every single time, even from the very first multiball. And they thought, well, maybe that will help dissuade people from doing that. Plus, the initial light where you have to actually go all the way around on the ramp back is a harder shot than just getting the balls in the lock itself. So it's things like that. Just to quickly run through for people, The games we had were the – I remember these are banks of three, but the EMs were Bronco. That's a Gottlieb 1977. We had Grand Prix, a perennial favorite of many tournament players. It's a Williams 76 game. High Hand, which is a Gottlieb 73. Jumping Jack, which is a Gottlieb 73. And then on the solid state, we had Meteor, which is a Stern 79. Frontier, which is a Bally 1980. Future Spa, which is a Bally 79.
    22:45
    Hoops, which is a premiere 1991. And then on the DMD side, we had Attack from Mars, which is Bally 95, though I think this was the remake. Iron Man, which is a Stern 2010. Mustang Premium, which is a Stern 2014. And Disneytron Legacy, which is a Stern 2011. We, in the qualifying, we were able to stream six games. And the focus that Carrie wanted, and I completely agree with, was try and stream games that people don't usually get to see. yeah and that was that was something that i really enjoyed uh because most of those games are so much less common i mean i didn't care about showing an afm because everybody knows afm right so when it was all said and done because we also hit on more when we were doing the semi-finals and the final rounds we streamed every every electric mechanical we were able to get we got all the solid state games except future spa and the only dot matrix game that showed was oh we got two i'm sorry we got mustang and we got tron so the only games we did not get were future spa iron man and attack from mars and uh i kind of wish we had gotten future spa but people see attack from mars and iron man all the time i feel so i was in no way heartbroken that that didn't work out but But, you know, ideally, the banks were always chosen randomly, even for finals. So it was just luck of the draw at that point. And there just weren't any games being played on Future Spot and Ironman in the finals. So it was just... Right, that's why we got so much time on, you know, Grand Prix and Mustang and Hoops and Frontier. Yeah, that bank ended up multiple times towards the end. So, yeah, we had at least two rounds with Grand Prix. We had two rounds with Mustang. We would have had three rounds with Hoops. Hoops was in that bank, but in the semifinals for Novice and quarterfinals for A-Division when we were on that bank, we weren't doing the rotation of the camera, yet we were still doing the two-for-a-round. And so Hoops was the odd man out because, unfortunately, it was underneath a giant lamp. And so Tony turned that down eventually. and it became much more watchable. But it was more painful to watch that than the other game that was also caught in that glare, which was Grand Prix. But Grand Prix was more on the edge of it. Hoops, you could barely even see the left flipper until it was turned down. And then it was tolerable then. But that was just another lesson we learned while we were going along. So those were the games we streamed.
    25:21
    Tony and I did the commentary the entire time. During A Division Finals, Steve Hill actually joined us. I noticed when I started looking back at some of that footage at the end, and I saw there were a few other people. They wised up. We had someone, Gordon Brown, brought a giant projector, and they were projecting the stream onto a screen, which was great. It was really funny, too, because it's like the 30-second delay. So people would drain in finals. They would run over and look at the screen to see what they did wrong. It was hilarious. It was. It was awesome. But here's the thing. Other people who didn't like those delays wisened up that Tony and I were on our computer seeing things like a half second behind. So they started watching over our shoulders because that was basically real time because then they weren't in the way of the people actually playing the game, and it was way before what was happening on the screen. Also, the projector was overheating because we didn't have any way to give it additional fan support. so Tony had to keep turning it off and turning it back on and people were getting upset because they couldn't see what was happening and it would cut out on them and I was just like I can't do anything about it guys you're not the ones playing just watch the commentary they should have just loaded up the commentary on Twitch on their phones we had free wifi and I liked it when we'd get real loud or something about something we watched even people who weren't watching the stream because of the delay, you'd see them turn around and jump up and look over to see the stream. I didn't notice that. Yeah, I noticed it a couple of times where we, you know, it's like, oh, great save, yeah. Also, you'd see like three people turn and look at the thing. I did see a few people who would walk back past the seven deep when it wasn't their turn. and they just finished, apparently, and then there would be three people in front of them, and we'd be saying stuff like, oh, what a terrible drink. Oh, why did he nudge it that hard? You can't do that on these games. And they're hearing you criticize them, and they're just giving you these looks. I didn't know it was that bad. It's like, you should have watched the commentary. You didn't know. You should have helped with setup. You'd really have known. Holy cow. So, yeah, it was fun.
    27:50
    It sounds like, again, when I was there today, I had a good opportunity to speak with Carrie and Adam McKinney were basically working the registration desk. And I sat there with them for a while. And it sounds like the staff of KC Game Con are very pleased with how the pinball side. I mean, I don't know what they're measuring with. Bottom line is apparently they really like it and they've already asked for pinball to come back next year. Very nice. so I asked our next year are they going to surround us with the gamers so that more of them have to walk through the pinball area and Kerry's like I think we kind of like being off on our own it was kind of nice being off on our own that was one of the things I did find interesting because I did go and wander the video game site a couple of times and they had it was flat out labeled as streamer row where they had all of their commentators and streamers set up for their comments oh it was so nice and it's so nice and i'm looking at they've got these beautiful rigs and this and that and all these amazing machines and you're sitting there with like four screens and everything set up and it's like and and and and they've got like really i mean we're using you know the little cams they're using like full up like 4k nice video cams and this and that and it's like wow i wouldn't mind getting to that point yeah someday it would be cool i mean but you know they've got their they They also got their live feeds into the games themselves. Right. And meanwhile, over in what I call pinball alley, it's like, no, Tony, turn to your other left. The camera's inverted. No, no, the other way. I don't know which direction it is anymore. Just keep turning it. Turn it. Plug in the cords. No, no, the other way. The cords are falling out. We need more masking tape.
    29:38
    We got these repeater cords everywhere. they're labeled like p1 b1 p2 b2 you can't even read them anymore those are squitched up and that was mostly just because i'm trying to manage the amount of bandwidth going through each usb port on the laptop uh desperately trying to make sure that all the cameras always work that was i mean in theory it didn't matter which cord anything was plugged into but it was just oh my god all these external cameras are ridiculous pinball pinball streaming's really hard compared to video game it's like it is and that's especially when you're doing it where you're moving the cameras constantly you're moving everything is you're if you're not just locking them down on on one or two machines for the whole run it's uh definitely makes things more interesting but yeah carrie because she's been so focused on getting the tournament and the scoring and the software and the registrations all set up for all of that she did not really know what to expect. She did not realize that we were going to be covering two games a round. We were going to be moving the rigs and that we were going to be able to and we had all the... She knew I had written up rules guides on all the games so we could talk about all the games without being incompetent on them but that we would just be actually providing a running commentary through all the qualifying and everything. I've seen pinball tournaments that do that. I've seen pinball tournaments that don't do it and in my opinion, you want the commentary all the time. It's just about the only way to make it really watchable except to hardcore people. Because if anyone wants to go and look at it later, now you can, as obnoxious as a 10-hour video with someone like me talking is, you can still just say, look at this, watch this. You can learn how to play Frontier watching this.
    31:24
    Especially when you go through, when we got on Frontier in the A-Finals and Steve Hill, who owns that particular Frontier, gave us every down and dirty on that machine. Sure. You'll probably feel the waves of knowledge overwhelm you as you're learning about which drop targets advance which multiplier for which of the two bonuses you want to be gathering if you're not going for spinner all day, which no one was.
    31:52
    Yeah, and we saw some really, of course, we saw some very, very brutal play coming from a lot of these games. We also saw some pretty amazing play. We got on stream when we didn't know until the end, actually. who it was, but Sunshine Bond had blown up Frontier. She set the new Grand Champion on the game. And that was round one. It was round one. 2.8 million points. And, I mean, that game was made harder than it came there as. You asked me at one point in the stream if I was worried if someone was going to beat my high score on Hoops. And I was like, after what Steve did to do it? No way.
    32:29
    In fact, it would have been harder for them to do it with just my software changes. I mean, he took out the side posts. At that point, I mean, hoops is a side drain monster. That's like how all those premieres are. Because they had those catch-all flippers in the middle. They set it up so that they tried to make you side drain. On the novice finals, when they were writing down scores off the hoops, they were waiting for it to scroll back through. And when it was going through the places, and every single one was DWK, DWK, DWK, DWK. That's right. I know your place.
    33:03
    Yeah, no, that was a – I'm very happy we did it. And having the gear now means this is something that is easier for us to look at for special events and set into.
    33:18
    I don't know if I would say this is something that we would plan on doing on this kind of scale, like, all the time, like some of those groups do where, you know, they do one, like, a couple times a month type thing. Oh, yeah. My basic thought would be, I guess if people wanted us to do commentary more often, I wouldn't be opposed to it, but I wouldn't want to do all of the setup like I did this. I mean, I, you know, and obviously I'm still exhausted from this still wrapping up event right now. But my initial thought would be for Casey Game Con 2019. Sure, I'm fine with basically planning to do what we did this year. I would be okay with that because that's a year off. I know I'll be all right by then. But if it was something more common, like they wanted to do something on a monthly basis, I'd be like, if you want me to do the commentary, okay. and that might mean I'm even willing to prep rules cheat sheets to acknowledge myself as long as I can have other people review them which is what I did this time but the wires and the rigs and moving all of that obviously that's a big struggle and of course they have to figure out what I mean hopefully they're using a location because I do not transport I mean this is the first time I've ever let my one of my games go out onto a location and the reason I ended up acquiescing besides I thought was a really good idea is they borrowed a trailer. So they came and got my game. That was a huge, that took a whole huge thing off my plate because I would have had to borrow a truck otherwise. And that's just another step to get it to a location that's almost 40 minutes away for me.
    35:04
    But it was fun, exhausting, but fun. So yeah, 10 hour stream. That's why we're recording now is because as soon as I push stop, the first thing I did was say export to YouTube. So that could start happening in the Twitch background so I didn't have to worry about later. Then I turned to Tony and said, I'm too tired. I don't want a podcast tonight. Let's go get tacos. Yeah, and I was all on board for that because I was done. My wife, my daughter, my oldest daughter watched the stream the entire way through. She was very excited.
    35:38
    And when she woke up this morning, because by the time I got home, she was asleep, because She went to sleep basically within 20 minutes of the stream ending last night. Right. Well, she's been ill. Yeah. And so when she woke up this morning, she came out and she told me that it was so exciting and that we were just like Golden Boy. Oh, God. The T-Mobile guy. Which was just. Golden Boy.
    36:09
    You can be Golden Boy. I'm Puckett. You're Puckett. Of course you're Puckett. I can't wear a hoodie to save my life, so I'm Puckett.
    36:19
    So, but no, it was a good time. And like I said, she liked it. But my wife would kept coming in occasionally and would watch it over her shoulder for a couple minutes. And she said you could tell throughout the course of the day that we were just getting more and more tired and more and more down. I was jumping towards through little segments of the stream trying to think, because whether or not people want to pull or if I want to pull some highlights out, I was just trying to remember what was going on. And I looked, and I was like, during A finals, my head is like on my hand. I'm like holding my head up the entire time, trying to remember. You can see I'm constantly trying to remember to keep my fingers out from in front of my face, because I knew I was blocking the sound. But I was propping myself up I noticed the same thing especially towards the end And I noticed it not even watching the stream I noticed it there that I kept propping my head up or doing this or that And I could tell just how drugged down I was getting.
    37:19
    So it was a definite thing. It was an endurance test. That's for sure. Yeah. 24 hours of the sanctum, don't have nothing on 10 hours in the casting booth.
    37:33
    Holy crap. And then we went and had deep fried tacos covered in powdered cheese. Yeah, that was weird. That was weird. It wasn't bad. It wasn't bad at all. It was quite good. I think I still have cheese under my fingernails. Yeah, the powdered cheese is just messy, but it tasted great. It was amazing. I was surprised. I thought about getting there when I left today, and it's like, no, no, no, no. I just need to get back, and we need to get this in the cans. Yeah. Oh, I guess we should probably mention the A-Division winner, Eric German. Yes, Eric German on a beautiful Game of Tron. Yes, and it is on stream, and you can go and watch it on the link we have to the YouTube of that. It's obviously towards the end. It's the second-to-last game, in fact, of the stream. Yes. Second-to-last because his comeback-slash-dominance on that particular game put him in first, and it put the other three players tied. So they had to go and play another game. What was it, Bronco? Yeah, they played a three-way tiebreaker on Bronco. Yes. So in order to determine second, third, and fourth. And, I mean, it was just so – everyone was still in it. That was what was so exciting about what was happening when it was on Tron. So there were a lot of really interesting scenarios. There was a good opportunity for there to be a three-way first-place tie. Yeah, there were so many scenarios. Yeah. And so the scenario that worked out was Eric got to sit there pretty, waiting for his check and his hardware and his Translight of his choice. He took Star Wars. And you just watch as they duked it out to see who got to have second, third, and fourth who didn't get any money. I know how that feels. Yeah.
    39:14
    But anyway, so yes, it was a lot of fun. Go ahead and check that out if you're interested in watching any competitive pinball.
    39:22
    We get a little snarky at times. We get more than a little snarky at times. We get a little snarky at times. We know a lot of these players. Sometimes we make some remarks. We try to be a little more fun, a little more like the eSports commentary and a little less like some of the pinball commentary I see where it just sort of goes into people talking about all their bad experiences on whatever game is currently up. We got to witness plenty of those to make fun of, so you didn't have to worry. There were tilts. There were outlings galore. It was glorious. absolutely glorious so to wrap up our pinball section Tony I've got 20 questions for you oh well I know for sure one thing it's not going to be any game that I played yesterday because I didn't play a single game yesterday you played more pinball than I did yesterday yeah because the closest I came to playing pinball was one of the old or a couple of the old EM's they didn't The play fields were dark unless there was an actual ball in play. So I would actually fire up a game so the lights would come up so we could get the lighting set right, and then I would turn it off and drain the ball. Yeah, yeah, that was – it was important because we could get the exposure right on the camera, which otherwise I tried to do it live, which I did do at some points, but it was very frustrating. So, yeah, I did get to play a few games. My niece, Nora, came by with my sister and brother-in-law, and they went around and picked up swag and saw some of the video game stuff, and they played some of the free play games. Oh, I do want to note that. When we went into the planning on KC Game Con, the hope was to have a 12-game tournament bank, mostly consisting of less often encountered solid state and EM games, which were two-thirds of the lineup, and also to have four games in a free play area. The free play area ended up – we had 25 games total. So it was almost 10 games, 9 games I guess in the always free play area. And then today when I was there, obviously those tournament games were on free play.
    41:31
    Like I went in and put in the side posts on hoops. I think some people were going around putting back on the center posts or rubbers on things so that they weren't quite as brutal anymore. So it's like let's change these now so that when the video game people come and they play, they don't hate pinball. so we did some of that so we got a lot more things and that was actually an issue that came up as an interesting aside before we actually moved to 20 questions I was told on Thursday when we were doing the setup the other half of the room you might remember those circular tables and it was very very open until you got to the video game area where there were all the bleachers and people able to watch their live streams and such that was going to be like a vendor hall that was going to be a section for vendors They moved the vendors to another room because we were taking too much electricity.
    42:20
    So that's part of the issue in 2019. If we want the same room, and KC Game Con basically said we can have the entire room. The issue with that room is the circuit breakers that the Expo Center has there cannot accommodate. We can't double the number of games. We can't. They already had to put some of the games on another breaker with like an extension cord. so I guess what they told Carrie was we can put you guys in another room so she'll have to decide if she wants to be in another room or not they're like it's no problem we'll get you somewhere else where we can get you more games in if you can get the games here we can get you more power we can do that because she was like oh I'm sorry we didn't mean to force the vendors out of this room and they're like it's no problem we have plenty of space for vendors so anyway that's why we ended up having the whole room to ourselves uh which was kind of which was kind of cool and a lot of people did walk through there was a lot of yeah yeah because there was a nice big open door that went like you said out to where the bleachers were so you could have watched the main tournament areas and and out to where all the actual gaming was uh the esporty esport gaming and land stuff was and when i was there on friday you saw people in cosplay costumes coming in and playing in giant furry outfits playing pinball games, and it was different.
    43:41
    It was different. Have you not been to a convention like that? A lot of conventions like that? Not with pinball. I understand ReplayFX has cosplay, but I hear it's not as well developed as some of the video game conventions are. I've been to a lot of cosplay heavy conventions. I'm just not used to seeing cosplay people in costume play pinball is all I'm saying. but hey it may be a market we want to tap I don't know I don't care what market I'm hoping we see some new people at some of our monthly stuff because we really pimped it yep that would be nice alright Tony 20 questions I am ready for your first one when you are set to go is it an EM yes is it a Gottlieb yes thinking thinking thinking thinking of course is it older than 1965 yes is it older than 60 no Does it have more than two flippers? No. That's question five.
    45:06
    Does it have a symmetrical play field? Hmm. Yes. Is it card themed? No. Is it from 61? No. 62? No. 63. Yes, that's question 10.
    45:34
    Okay. I mean, that didn't really help me a whole lot for knowing off the top of my head. It could help you later, though. But it will help me later. That was kind of a preset thing. That was kind of my thinking going into that one. It's just like I could ask who I could go for the designers, but, I mean, it's Gottlieb, so that doesn't really help because, you know, back in the EMs, it's like, oh, good. That cuts it down to like 50 games.
    46:05
    Is it sci-fi theme? No. Let's see. 63, two flippers, symmetrical godly. Am I going to kick myself when I find out what it is? That's not an actual question. I don't know. I don't know you that well. I don't know what makes you prone to violence. That's just the realities of it. Let's see. Is it, is it, let's see. Not card themed, not sci-fi themed.
    46:44
    Symmetrical, two flippers, 63. Golly. Is it fantasy themed? No. Is it sports themed? No. Is it themed? no don't that's not a real one that's a not cards not sci-fi not fantasy not sports maybe he's kind of like a slice of life theme so you know like it's just like normal stuff sure yeah I mean I don't think that really helps a lot but is it to player? No. That's question 15.
    47:34
    I know I'm going to kick myself. So with 15, I get to cheat. You get to have resources to help you. I get to have resources.
    47:45
    Year of release. 1963. Is it a slick check? Yes. It's the only one in this list I've played. But you have played it. But I have played it. And here's the interesting thing. Slick Chick is actually one that had crossed my mind when I was trying to think of older Gottliebs. It is an older Gottlieb. I guess guys photographing girls in bunny hats while barbershop quartets are singing in the background are slice of life. Yeah, well, see, I didn't know how to put it. Because, you know, in the 60s there were a lot of things that it was just, you know, like people at a party and people doing normal day stuff. It wasn't cards. It wasn't doing sports. It was just things. It's just people doing stuff. The name Slick Chick, I guess, actually comes from a restaurant, but it's just kind of like a dinner theater thing with sexy girls is the theme. Well, it was the 60s. That was pretty much all of that type of thing back then because, let's see, 63, Gottlieb. We're looking at Flying Chariots, Gaucho,
    48:54
    GG, Slick Chick, Squarehead, Sweethearts, and Swing Along. I don't think I have played any of those except for Slick Chick. Maybe Swing Along. Let me look at Swing Along.
    49:05
    No. But have you not played GG? I don't think so. I don't recognize it, name anyway, but let me actually look at it.
    49:22
    I don't recognize it, and I would think something with that many horrifying clowns on it, I would recognize. Yeah, well, so yes, Slick Chick. What is up with the clown stuff that was so prevalent? Wayne Nyans, the designer, liked clowns. Oh, okay.
    49:40
    Slick Chick is known for, besides its art package, a very distinctive pop bumper layout where Slick and Chick and the eye is shared in the center. Symmetrical layout, which was Nyan's preference. Right, it had that big X bumper. I mean, they weren't all pop bumpers, weren't they? As I recall, weren't some of them just regular bumpers? Yeah, it actually uses four passive bumpers and five pop bumpers in its layout. No outlanes on the game. there's a gobble hole beneath the center eye bumper and that's often a common target we've played this at Todd of Big Daddy Enterprises house in high score qualifying tournament stuff before generally if you want to not take last you want at least to get one ball in that gobble hole right because there's good points to be had yeah it's 100 points so and it's a single player game and the scoring, obviously, is relatively low on it. It actually has a light that'll light up to show a 1 if you actually break a 1,000. But you'd roll the game after 1,999.
    50:50
    Anyway, good job, Slick Chick. Woohoo! Alright. Well, I didn't have anything set up for you on this one, so... Well, we can move on to the video game segment, which you do have some set up. Oh, I have so much And I'm going to bounce my order around a little bit. Because obviously because we've been so busy and there were a few announcements that just came out yesterday that I saw and stuff. So we're going to play around a little bit. I want to start with just a little bit of news.
    51:26
    This isn't like huge news, but it is very interesting to me for the most part. A game I've spoken about on this show since pretty much right after we started, Firewatch, is coming to the Nintendo Switch. It will be coming to the Nintendo Switch this month. It will be coming on December 17th.
    51:57
    And there were some optimizations being built into the Switch port. that will be carried over to all other platforms eventually. I'm not sure what those are or when they'll be carried over, but it is coming.
    52:20
    The port was originally announced in April, but it didn't have a release date until now. So if you have a Switch and you have not had a chance to play Firewatch on anything else because it's out on PS4, Windows, PC, and Xbox One, and it's been out for two, almost three years now. I highly recommend it. It is a wonderful kind of, I don't want to call it a visual novel because visual novels are their own very special thing, but it is a very fun narrative story. it's not like a full up video game like you would normally see it's just more of a narrative story RPG type thing where you're going through but it's not like you're ever fighting or doing anything like that right yeah it's reviewed very well yeah it's quite enjoyable the other thing is tying into my love of the battle tech besides the fact that the new DLC for Battletech released on the 27th of November.
    53:35
    MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries, which is the single-player and sometimes multiplayer. It's not always got a multiplayer component to it, but the straight-up regular simulation type of MechWarrior game where you're the pilot piloting the mech as opposed to Battletech's strategic turn-based combat view, will be releasing on September 10, 2019 with MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries. It is being put out by Piranha Games. Piranha Games is the one who does MechWarrior Online, which is the all-online combat version of the MechWarrior game. It's basically like World of Tanks or World of Warships or any of those type of games, but is MechWarrior based.
    54:34
    The thing with that is the MechWarrior Online, the mechs look nice. Most of the systems and the way it all works together is good, and I know there's still a fairly large number of people who play it. I just don't like the online component because I like the story and everything else that has been typically in the MechWarrior games. So while I played it for a while, I kind of dropped off of it because it is basically just, oh, you start a battle, the sides are even, the sides beat each other up. And there's some other story stuff going on, but it's not like a real narrative story story. And it wasn't what I was looking for. It was basically like going online to play Battlefield or Call of Duty and all that, but you were in MEX instead. Okay.
    55:26
    It just wasn't really what I was looking for in it. See, where Battletech is set in 3025, this will be set in a not too similar timeframe It be set a little later than 3025 It's going to be set between the third and fourth succession wars. And as I recall, the third succession war is 3026 is when it starts. Yeah, 3028 is when the Fourth Succession War started.
    56:10
    So it will be taking place in a similar time zone to when the Battletech game is. So this is taking place pre-Clan Invasion, which for the Battletech people is basically the big time where the ancestors left and were gone for hundreds and hundreds of years, and then they came back. and when they came back they were very much a force to be reckoned with their tech base had not fallen nearly as far they hadn't fallen at all actually they had actually advanced and they had actually used like genetics and they bred genetically for combat so they came back thinking with the overall assumption to conquer humanity and return it to the righteous path that it should have been on before they left. Naturally. Of course, because that's what evil genetically engineered people do. I've never seen different. Yeah, no. And also, and part of the news going from one of those bits that would have been in my notes for what I've done lately, I bought myself an early Christmas present when the sales started popping up around Black Friday. A new laptop.
    57:45
    Actually, I do have a new laptop coming. I know. That's what I said. That's something else entirely. Oh.
    57:50
    That wasn't a pre-Black Friday sale. That was just me getting a good deal worked out where I was able to get a laptop. It's on the way. I got a new very high-end gaming laptop that I'm going to use for streaming and for a lot of podcast stuff, and the family's going to use it for other laptop-type things. But it's going to give us, between your laptop and me having a laptop and having stuff with the actual capabilities, it's going to give us a lot more ability to do stuff on the go and away from our normal setups. but in addition to that I snagged one of those $200 PS4 slims with the one terabyte drives that came with Spider-Man I've been playing a lot of Spider-Man that game is fun I'm not a Spider-Man fan as in I know Spider-Man is Marvel's most popular superhero by far If Spider-Man lost half of his fans, he'd probably still be the most popular Marvel superhero. I've never really liked Spider-Man. I don't hate Spider-Man. It's not like I'm like, oh, Spider-Man. I just don't care one way or another about Spider-Man. He's never had the appeal to me that most people have with him for whatever reason. But the game, the game's fun. the thing I really like is the way they handle travel and the web slinging and the swinging between around buildings and swinging through New York it's very fluid it's very enjoyable and it's quick and it's very much an open world game because they have the entire all of New York basically is where the game takes place because it's Spider-Man so but you can go down and start you know in battery park and just head north and just book it through town and you have to go all over town doing stuff and there's landmark all sorts of landmarks built into everything and uh one of the little side goals because you know every game anymore open world game has those little side goals where you have to collect something or do this or that it includes taking pictures of landmarks and you get to the point i mean you don't have to do anything special to take the picture. You just have to pull up the camera, because, I mean, it's Peter Parker. Of course, he's got a camera, and take a picture and go on, but it got to the point where my big thing was, hey, can I take the picture while flying through the air as fast as possible so I don't have to stop and take the picture? I'll just go and hit as many landmarks as I can as fast as I can, I think, and it was a lot of fun.
    60:44
    I have to say, if you have access to play Spider-Man and you haven't, you should give it a try if you like open world games. The combat's not terrible.
    60:57
    I don't really like the stealthy portions of it. I mean, there's some stealthy portions of it and some stealthy abilities and I use them, but I'm not... they feel a little weaker than the rest of the combat and everything else because it's not like you can... it's not like you're going into stealth mode and doing the kind sneaking around you would in something like, you know, like a splinter cell or something like that. It's a much looser, it's a much, much looser stealth mode. It's a, hey, look, there's a guy in a bright red suit standing on an I-beam and I'm walking back and forth under him and somehow I never notice him type stealth. Yeah, it's one of those where it's like, okay, yeah, sure,
    61:50
    looking at you in my bright red suit. But it's not bad. It's been enjoyable. The thing I'm looking forward to is I've already put a bunch of, I've already wish-listed a bunch of PS4 games, seeing as it is coming into Christmas time. So I'm going to hopefully get a bunch more games throughout Christmas to play on that. When this new laptop arrives, I'm going to get certain games installed on it I've got almost everything I need to have that laptop ready to go as soon as it gets here The only other thing I need is I am still in debate if I'm going to pull one of the three monitors off my desktop rig to use as a secondary monitor for the laptop so I can use the laptop for streaming that way or if I am going to go purchase a fourth monitor to set up to use for the laptop. First world computer problem. I know. Well, and the other thing is I actually saw a really good deal on a TV a couple days ago for a 32-inch TV. And I've got a very old 32-inch TV sitting on my desk now that I've got my Switch and my PS4 hooked up to and my Chromecast that I use for watching movies or whatever other stuff when I'm using that. And it's also an old 32-inch TV, but I've thought about getting a newer one that has more HDMI ports and using that just as an occasional secondary monitor for that computer if I needed to. Okay. I think so, especially if I got one with a high enough quality. I just think the TV I have now, I'm not sure if its quality is going to be high enough. I'm going to try it.
    63:57
    That's why I haven't made any decisions and I haven't bought anything yet because I want to wait until it gets here. and I see how it looks hooked up to the TV with an HDMI cable before I make that final decision.
    64:12
    Okay. So our last thing is Fallout 76. And, no, I've not played Fallout 76. No, I have. I love the games Bethesda puts out.
    64:27
    That said, I will always be one of those first people to admit, that at no point in time should you get a Bethesda game the month it comes out because they always have a bunch of issues that need to be fixed.
    64:44
    That said, I did get Fallout 4 like two weeks after it came out, and it wasn't near, but it had bugs that had to be resolved. The issue is, is Fallout 76's bugs are pretty crazy. They've had some real big glitches.
    65:10
    One player, I recall, had run into an issue where something had messed up, and they were literally unkillable. and their character was just didn't even take damage. It just didn't matter what it did.
    65:29
    And there's been a whole bunch of other bugs and the standard kind of glitches. It's all issues that Bethesda has except for they've been doing really a lot worse than normal. They've been having some disconnect issues. they've been having some server crashing issues and it turns out that if you launch a nuke or if enough nukes get launched at once or at least it was when it first came out that you would crash the server. Oh yeah, I heard about that. Yeah.
    66:08
    And there are bugs where the characters can't leave their power armor except for the power armor disappears so your guy's just naked but his arms and everything's all stretched out and weird.
    66:24
    The immortality bug I talked about, they've been having tons and tons of those type of issues and lots of other more little normal issues. But then the really big issue came out, And that's the fact that they, as they do, released a special edition. They released a $200 special edition, the Fall of 76 Power Armor edition, that comes with all the same extra silly stuff that collector's editions always come with. But one of the things in the list was listed as a canvas duffel bag. and they had images of the thing with what looked like a very nice fallout canvas duffel bag unfortunately that's not the bag that people got when it shipped when it shipped they got just a cheap nylon bag uh-oh so right it was one of those things that it happens to them and a fair amount. They got into an issue where the,
    67:42
    what do you want to call them? Basically the influencers. Well, yeah, yeah. That's what ended up happening. But before we got to the influencers, actually, they were having some poor PR problems where they were having some of their people that you call in with problems to.
    68:04
    I want to call them like GMs is what they'd be in an MMO, but whatever. Oh, okay. You'd contact them. They were having some PR problems because they're like, oh, that's what it's supposed to be, or no, it was never supposed to be that, or yeah, it was supposed to be this. Basically what it amounts to is the canvas bag that was in the picture was a prototype that they decided was too expensive to make.
    68:27
    So they just replaced it with the cheap nylon bag that looked kind of similar to that one. But on top of all of that harshness, instead of refunding people money or anything like that, they offered to give them 500 atoms. And atoms are their purchasable in-game credit. for it since it's fallout the MMO type thing. The problem is 500 atoms is $5.
    69:04
    So they bought a $200 thing. It was supposed to have this super nice duffel bag made of canvas and they got just a cheap nylon bag and they offered to make it right by giving them $5. I heard that 500 atoms in the Fallout 76 online store isn't enough to buy the in-game duffel bag? It's not. The in-game outfit that comes with the duffel bag they were supposed to get is 700 ounces.
    69:40
    First Blizzard and now Bethesda. What's going on? I don't know. I really don't know. The Blizzard thing I think was a completely misunderstanding their people. Or their misunderstanding what their player base... Misunderstanding BlizzCon attendees. Right, they were misunderstanding the BlizzCon attendees and what their player base was expecting.
    70:04
    It's gotten bad enough with the issues with Fallout 76 that there have been lots of people trying to get refunds and there's been talk of a class action suit because the game is so broken. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm not surprised. but the thing that really pushed people over the limit when it came to the power armor edition is it turns out that while they couldn't make the canvas duffels for that special edition of those people paid 200 for uh they were able to make a bunch of canvas bags to give out to influencers so Twitch players and YouTubers and this and that we should have gotten some yeah we're not a big enough influencer yet maybe we need to let them know just what big deal we are I think maybe we do that could be part of the problem I've played your game and said good things about it I've never streamed it but I've played it I'd stream it if it would quit crashing yeah if it would work I'd stream it but the thing is the it's not the same bag. It's a very different bag.
    71:19
    It doesn't look anything like it, but it is a bag that is seen as very nice. And it's just influencers got it for free. The people who paid $200 get nothing.
    71:36
    They get canvas. Well, I mean, nylon is technically canvas. Sorry. I guess they could try and argue that nylon is cannabis. Basically, at this point, Bethesda's answer is, we'll try and do better.
    71:54
    And that they're going to try and be, they're going to improve their communication and try and be more transparent on dealing with Fallout 76 issues.
    72:05
    Okay, well, at least they said something, but I'm not sure that's going to really satisfy anyone. Yeah, I don't think so either. It's going to be a little harsh run for them.
    72:19
    Here's the problem. I think what a lot of the problem comes down to is they are working with a heavily modified PS2 engine. Yes. That's what they're doing. Yes, I've heard about that. And they just keep adding more stuff onto it and doing minor tweaks to it to make it handle more modern stuff. and make it handle, to be able to force it to do what they're trying to make it to do. And they are at a point they need a new engine. Yes.
    72:53
    Yeah. And there's nothing to, I mean, that's going to be, take what it takes to fix. This is similar to the issue we talked about with Telltale Games that they were running into, is that their games had good narratives and this and that, but they were getting to a point where they needed a new engine. and they didn't have one.
    73:13
    We'll have to see, but it is Bethesda got hit hard. This has been a rough year for two fan favorite game companies between Bethesda and Blizzard both taking major hits.
    73:31
    That is their own making. Yes, it is. well we reached the end of the show we have we covered pinball, we covered video games we covered our lives so if people want to reach out to us you can email us eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com or you can reach out to us on facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast we're available on instagram and twitter at eclectic underscore gamers as well as we are on twitch as eclectic underscore gamers and we'll talk to you guys again in about two weeks until then I'm Dennis I'm Tony see ya